Seeing Blackbird fly again after all these years would be incredible. I’d love to know what NASA has planned for it.
NASA has always been into atmospheric research and vehicle design. Pulling out a SR-71 is going to be faster and cheaper than building a new thing and they have a history of using hand-me-downs. I’m glad they are doing stuff, though this administration is probably focused more on “coolness” and bribes for profits. Getting the Blackbird is cool and the secrecy could be actual national security or free research for a buddy. I’d love to see more long lead space projects, deep space probes, inner planet landings, and outer planet orbiters.
It’s the only way they can be sure it’s not full of AI slop.
X-Men are real!
I love the blackbird / a-12 / yf-12 family. They’re truly the pinnacle of pre-computerized engineering in many ways. Most of the design was completed before 1960 - a mach 3 aircraft, made with slide rules and deeeeep institutional knowledge. People joked that Kelly Johnson could see air, he was so good at designing aircraft and anticipating problems.
that said: why bring it back?
it’s gotta be a successor - I don’t know if we could bring the airframes back to operational status, and the fuel situation is wacky. does anyone even make jp7 anymore? panther piss?
and even if you could bring it back to operational status, and supply the specialized tankers (most tankers fuel from a common supply they run off of, but the jp7 carrying tankers for the sr-71 have a separate tank just for the blackbird) and train everyone up, the blackbird is visible from hundreds of miles away on modern radar. It was stealthier than most of it’s peers but never a stealth aircraft like the f117.
This all tells me: it’s gotta be a new toy.
In the words of the nasa director themselves during the keynote speech “Are you sure that the silhouette we showed was an SR-71?”
The NY Post is a diseased maga rag and should never be used as a source.
How can it be the fastest plane if it’s not even painted red?
OK - so, Trump thinks they are cool and wants them back in action despite having better technology already in place. This tracks because of his dumb Trump-class battleship in development, which will be closed down soon after being commissioned because it’s a dumb idea.
I wonder what would happen if you painted a blackbird with Vantablack paint?
If it flew at night would you be able to see it?
Would it stand out as darker than the darkness?
Don’t you guys see it: If really crazy stuff happens and satellites are taken out of the sky, youre going to see to do some old-school reconnaissance.
“If you got a ton of money, maybe you can make it happen,” he told Aviation Week. “They went to the Moon, you know.”
That is SO funny.
NASA is researching quieter supersonic flight, and I can’t help but think of how the (also Lockheed Martin) X-59-
-has a extreme wing profile/nose, not unlike SR-71:
8700 lbs max doesn’t seem like a lot, are they counting on the parabola for most of the acceleration I wonder?
I think the most likely explanation is something like this, they want data they can’t otherwise get.
Machine learning + fluid dynamics?
Guy at NASA:
boomer nostalgia is a disease, and it isn’t more complicated than that
supersonic missles might have something to do with it
